Writing
SINA ASHRAFI ' '''WRITING ' 'Introduction ' We are now aware that writing is not a decontextualized activity but rather it is embedded in the cultural and institutional context in which it is produced (Kern 2000; Hyland 2002). Additionally, it involves a dynamic interaction among the three basic elements that play a part in the writing act, namely the text, the writer and the reader, which requires writers’ consideration of all them in order to write accordingly (Silva and Matsuda (2002). 'Writing within an environmentalist approach ' Up to the end of the 1960s, writing was neglected in the language learning field. These ideas, which were rooted in structural linguistics and behaviorist psychology, identified language with speech and described the language learning process as a mechanical process based on a stimulus-response-reinforcement chain (see Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor this volume). It was believed that mastery of spoken language and its orthographic conventions had to precede the learning of written language because discrepancy between speech sounds and orthography could cause interferences with the proper learning of speech (Silva and Matsuda 2002). Accordingly, writing was seen as a language skill which served as reinforcement of learning grammatical and vocabulary knowledge, which in turn served to achieve oral correctness. Instruction typically involved imitation of what were thought to be appropriate sentences as well as their manipulation, that is to say, sentence combination or rework of problematic sentences. Furthermore, the task of writing was tightly controlled to prevent errors caused by first language interference (Kroll 2001). In such a context, a written text, as pointed out by Silva (1990: 13), was merely considered as “a collection of sentences patterns and vocabulary items – a linguistic artifact, a vehicle for language practice.” 'Writing within an innatist approach ' By the late 1960s attention began to shift away from attention to form toward the actual process of composition, that is, towards ways in which text could be developed. Thus with the collaboration of the disciplines of psycholinguistics (Slobin 1970; Brown 1973) and cognitive psychology (Sharnk and Abelson 1977), which showed that children are active rather than passive in the language learning process since they infer rules to test how language works, writers’ mental processes during the composing act began to gain importance. Braddock, Lloyd-Jones and Schoer (1963) were the first researchers to question the effectiveness of grammar instruction to improve learners’ writing and they made a call for teachers to investigate how writing was actually produced. Consequently, research began to focus on the internal processes going on inside writers which were involved in the production of this skill. Emig’s (1971) work was the first case-study that responded to the shift in writing orientation away from product toward process. She analyzed learners’ cognitive processes while writing by means of the technique of the think aloud protocol and found out that the stages of writing are not lockstep or sequential but rather recursive and creative. From this research, cognitive models of writing emerged. The most influential theory was set forth by Flower and Hayes (1981), who proposed a cognitive model of recursive writing consisting of three major elements: 1) the planning stage, in turn subdivided into smaller processes such as generating ideas, organizing these ideas and setting the goals for writing; 2) the translating stage, in which writers articulate and write down their thoughts generated in the first stage; and 3) the reviewing stage, in which writers evaluate and revise the text. Researchers then, began to recommend focusing on writing not as a product but as a process, thereby decreasing the focus on grammar and spelling. This approach highlighted personal writing, the writer’s creativity, and fluency (Reid 2001). Thus, as Kern (2000: 181) points out, “writing was no longer seen simply as a way of recording thoughts, feelings, and ideas after the fact, but also as a key means of generating and exploring new thoughts and ideas.” As a result of such a view, learners were taught to become active writers, that is to say, to generate thoughts or ideas and move actively and dynamically throughout their composing processes. Hence, the main role of the teacher, was first to foster learners’ creativity, and then to guide them in the process of drafting, revising and editing their writings (Silva 1990; Kern 2000; Silva and Matsuda 2002). The written text therefore, was no longer viewed as a vehicle for practicing the language but rather as a vehicle for generating thoughts and ideas. 'Writing within an interactionist approach ' By the late 1970s beginning of the early 1980s, attention shifted toward the sociocultural context of the writing act under the influence of the interactionnist approach to language learning (see Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor this volume) and, particularly, with the development of discourse analysis which provided the theoretical foundations for understanding the act of writing. On the one hand, within text linguistics, the research conducted by Winter (1977) and Hoey (1983) was influential since it represented an effort to organize the diversification of discourse in language teaching. These authors distinguished three main patterns of textual organization: 1) the problem-solution pattern, in which a problem is presented in a given situation followed by the response to the problem and the evaluation of the response as a solution to the problem; 2) the hypothetical-real pattern, which is characterized by, first, the presentation of a statement which is to be supported or rejected, and then the affirmation or denial of that statement, and 3) the general-particular pattern, in which a generalization is presented followed by an exemplification of that generalization. This approach maintains that what makes writing coherent is not in the text but in the readers’ prior knowledge of the formal and linguistic structure of different types of texts or formal schemata. On the other hand, within systemic linguistics, Halliday (1978) developed a systematic way of describing language in terms of its functions within social contexts. Basic to his theory was the notion of register, whichis a functional language variation and is analyzed on the basis of three variables: field, or the social function; tenor, or the role of the participants; and mode, or what the language is doing. Holliday’s theory represented the theoretical foundation for current contextual approaches to writing. In these approaches, the writer is viewed as a social being, and texts are viewed as a social purpose and have come to be associated with the notion of genre. Swales’s (1990) definition of genre, which was closely tied to Halliday’s (1978) functional approach to language, highlighted the fact that the communicative purpose of a text is the most important feature of the genre, rather than any formal feature. In fact, he maintained that it is this communicative purpose that influences the textual choices of the writer. Genres, thus, are not patterns of words but rather socially accepted ways of using the language for communicative purposes. The most well-known research in ESP genre analysis was conducted by Swales (1990), who analyzed the moves or functional sections in research articles introductions. Genre-approaches to writing therefore enhanced the interactive view of writing that was emerging from textual analyses by incorporating not only the context of situation of writing but also the context of culture. As described by Connor (1996: 5), three basic principles underlie this theory: “Language and writing are cultural phenomena”; 2) “Each language has rhetorical conventions unique to it”; and 3) “The linguistic and rhetorical conventions of the first language interfere with writing in the second language.” With these contributions from text linguistics and contextual approaches to writing, it became obvious that writing itself was a dynamic, creative and contextualized process of communicating through texts. From an ESP genre approach, it has been recommended that three main phases should be follow in that instruction (Hyland 2002: 21): 1) modeling, in which the teachers provides an explicit explanation of the genre to be dealt with; 2) negotiating, in which the teacher guides the class composition by means of questions; and 3) construction, in which the students construct the genre by working through several drafts in consultation with the teacher. 'Teaching writing within a communicative competence framework ' In this construct of communicative competence, the skill of writing plays a crucial role in facilitating the acquisition of communicative competence. It is the main purpose of this section, therefore, to show where the writing skill fits into the bigger picture of the proposed communicative competence framework presented by Usó-Juan and Martínez-Flor (this volume). 'Discourse competence ' Discourse competence enables writers to use discourse features to achieve a well-formed written text given a communicative goal and context in which it has to be written (Celce-Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell 1995). These discourse features involve cohesion (e.g., reference, substitution, ellipsis, conjunction and lexical chains), coherence (and its markers) as well as formal schemata or knowledge of the structure of written genres (Scarcella and Oxford 1992). Thus, if writers are to create a coherent written text, they need first to plan the discourse features to be used and then relate them to a given communicative purpose and context. 'Linguistic competence ' Linguistic competence is an umbrella concept that comprises basic elements of written communication such as vocabulary or lexicon, grammar rules, and conventions in mechanics. Regarding lexical resources, writers need to know basic word meanings and how these meanings, for example, may differ depending on context (Kern 2000). In order to use words, writers also need to become familiar with knowledge of the grammatical system. Thus, writers need to pay attention to form in order to learn the grammar rules underlying the syntactic relations as well as the structure of clauses. 'Pragmatic competence ' Pragmatic competence involves an understanding of the illocutionary force of an utterance in accordance with the situational and participant variables within which the utterance takes place, as well as politeness issues such as degrees of formality. An important point to remember here is that a written text also provides important clues to meaning and that mastery of how these clues is essential for writers if their ultimate goal is to make readers achieve a full understanding of a given written text. In fact, Johns (this volume) emphasizes the importance of helping learners to understand how texts are voiced by paying attention to their rhetorical situation. Of course, the interrelationship of this component with the discourse component is obvious, since texts always carry with them an intended meaning. '''Intercultural competence Intercultural competence deals with the knowledge of how to produce written texts within a particular sociocultural context. In order to produce a competently written discourse within a particular culture, writers need to understand and adhere to the rules and norms of behavior that exist in a target language community, as well as to develop cross-cultural awareness, since each particular culture has different “do’s and don’t’s” (Celce- Murcia, Dörnyei, and Thurrell 1995: 25). Similarly, Tribble (this volume) in a way, stresses the importance of cultural aspects by arguing the need to present learners with English as a lingua franca writing models in order to cope with the learner’s writings needs, i.e., with samples in which the English language is, in principle, neutral with regard to the different socio-cultural backgrounds of its users. Strategic competence In addition to all the above-described competencies, writers also need to have strategic competence, which refers to both learning and communicating strategies (Scarcella and Oxford 1992). On the one hand, writers need to possess a set of learning strategies to write effectively. Kroll (this volume) points out the relevance of encouraging learners to develop the strategy of revising their drafts based on their own opinion or suggestions from peers and/or teachers. Reid and Kroll (1995) developed a set of six guidelines for the preparation of successful writing assignments: 1. A writing assignment should be presented with its context clearly delineated such that the student understands the reasons for the assignment. 2. The content of the topic area should be accessible to and appropriate for the writers while being broad enough to allow for multiple approaches. 3. The language of the “task” part of the assignment and the instructions it is embedded in should be unambiguous, comprehensible and transparent. 4. The task should be focused enough to allow for completion in the time or length constraints designated. Additionally, it should further students’ knowledge of classroom skills. 5. The rhetorical specifications (cues) should provide a clear direction of likely shape and format of the finished assignment, including appropriate references to an anticipated audience. 6. The evaluation criteria should be identified so that students will know in advance on what basis their output (i.e., written product) will be judged. Contexts of writing improvement ' Writing is at once a profoundly complex ability, a highly conventionalized mode of communication, and a uniquely personal form of individual expression. Helping students to improve their writing requires an approach toteaching that attends to each of these elements judiciously. At the same time, teachers need to foster students’ capacities to regulate their own writing performance autonomously, purposefully, and effectively. The consensus of recent research is that learning to write in a second or foreign language fundamentally involves students improving 1) features of the texts they write, 2) their processes of composing, and 3) their interactions appropriate to literate social contexts. '''Goals and self-regulated learning ' The diversity of contexts for learning to write in a second or foreign language certainly invites an approach to teaching that caters to the interests and purposes of individual students. But further reasons to adopt an individualized pedagogical approach come from theories of learning complex abilities such as writing. All major theories of writing development emphasize people’s individual processes of progressively learning to regulate a complex set of their own knowledge and behaviors to produce texts appropriate to specific social contexts (Bereiter and Scardamalia 1987; Zimmerman and Bandura 1994; Hayes 1996; Smagorinsky 1997). Most case studies of the long-term development of writing in second languages likewise highlight students’ processes of progressively self-regulating their writing performance in relation to the social contexts in which they study or work (Spack 1997; Parks and Maguire 1999; Cumming and Riazi 2000; Sasaki 2004). '''Objects of goals In our interview data, the majority of goals that students expressed concerned their wanting to improve either their language (e.g., vocabulary or grammar), the rhetoric or genre forms of their writing (e.g., to write argumentative essays), or their processes of composing (e.g., planning, drafting, editing). To lesser extents, certain goals also related to the students’ development of ideas and knowledge (e.g., “I try to find out more how people write in my professional field”), affective states (e.g., “I try to feel relaxed when I write”), learning and transfer (e.g., “The things we do in class I try to use in my writing”), or identity and self-awareness (e.g., “I want to feel comfortable writing in English like I do when writing in Spanish”). 'Implications for teaching L2 writing ' 1. Organize courses to foster students’ goals and their achievement 2. Promote a range of goals and uses of resources 3. Respond to students’ writing in respect to their personal goals ' ' 'Research on second language writing (BROWN) ' 1. Composing versus writing 2. Process versus product 3. Contrastive rhetoric 4. Differences between L1 and L2 writing 5. Authenticity 6. Responding to student writing 7. Voice and identity 'Characteristics of writing language: a writer’s view ' 1. Permanence, 2. Production time, 3. Distance, 4. Orthography, 5. Complexity, 6. Vocabulary, 7. Formality 'Types of classroom writing performance ' Imitative or writing down, Intensive or controlled, Self-writing, Display writing, Real writing (academic, vocational/technical, personal) 'Principles for teaching writing skills ' 1. Incorporate practice of good writers 2. Balance process and product 3. Account for cultural/literary backgrounds 4. Connect reading and writing 5. Provide as much authentic writing as possible 6. Frame your techniques in terms of prewriting, drafting, and revising stages 7. Strive offer techniques that are as interactive as possible 8. Sensitively apply methods of responding to and correcting your students writing 9. Clearly instruct students on the rhetorical, formal conventions of writing 'Writing assessment tasks: ' 1. Imitative writing, 2.intensive writing, 3.responsive writing, 4.extensive writing.